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Only a solid performance by the Mexican satellite TV industry has rescued the Latin American pay-TV market from ‘torpor’, says Digital TV Research.

In its Latin America Pay TV Forecasts report, the analyst found that there will be 83.47 million pay-TV homes in Latin America by 2022 – up by 10.5 million on 2016’s 72.96 million. More than 31 million pay-TV subs were added between 2010 and 2016.

In 2016 Mexico overtook Brazil in 2016 to become Latin America’s largest pay-TV market, despite the latter country having twice as many TV households. Indeed, the stats show Brazil has been losing subscribers since November 2014 whereas Mexico has benefitted from strong adoption of prepaid satellite TV. Digital TV Research believes that over the next five years Mexico will strengthen its position, taking 30% of the region’s pay-TV subs by 2022, with Brazil accounting for a quarter of the total.

Yet despite the growth in homes, Digital TV Research calculates that subscriptions and pay-per-view (PPV) pay-TV revenues in Latin America will grow by only 7.7%, the equivalent of a rise of $1.4 billion, between 2016 and 2022 to $19.87 billion.

Despite its loss of traction in subs, Brazil’s pay-TV industry will generate revenue worth $6.9 billion in 2022, some way ahead of Mexico ($3.2 billion) and Argentina ($2.2 billion). Brazilian subscription rates are much higher than Mexican ones, which are low largely due to the popularity of pre-paid satellite TV.

The Latin America Pay TV Forecasts report also found that two operators dominate pay-TV in Latin America. America Móvil had 14.61 million pay-TV subscribers (mostly under its Claro brand) by end-2016 and DirecTV/Sky had 20.49 million. These two companies accounted for almost half of the region’s pay-TV subscribers by end-2016.